A new version of gss, version 0.8-2, is on CRAN now. Numerous new functionalities have been added since my last r-announce post. An ssanova1 suite has been added since version 0.7-4. It implements low-dimensional approximations of the smoothing spline ANOVA models of the ssanova suite. ssanova1 scales much better than ssanova with large sample sizes. A gssanova1 suite is added for non Gaussian regression. Similar to ssanova1, it provides better scalability than gssanova. Direct cross-validation is used in gssanova1 instead of the indirect CV of gssanova. Currently, only three families are supported: binomial, poisson, and Gamma; other families of gssanova will be added to gssanova1 in the (near?) future. An sshzd suite is added to fit hazard models using right-censored lifetime data with possible left-truncation and covariates. It estimates log hazard as "bivariate" smooth functions of time and covariates through penalized full likelihood. It only takes static covariates but accommodates interactions between time and covariates, going beyond the proportional hazard models. Utilities are provided for the calculation of a certain Kullback-Leibler projection of cross-validated fits to "reduced model" spaces, for the "testing" of model terms. Projection code is provide for ssanova1, gssanova1, ssden, and sshzd fits. Further details are to be found in the documentations and the examples therein. As always, feature suggestions and bug reports will be sincerely appreciated. Chong Gu